The present invention relates to policy enforcement within messaging environments. More particularly, the present invention relates to symmetric coherent request/response policy enforcement.
A service level agreement (SLA) represents a consumer-based agreement for services formed between a consumer and a service provider. An SLA may represent an agreement regarding sending and/or receiving a particular number of messages per time period, an agreement regarding a quality of service (e.g., bandwidth) for message throughput, or other form of consumer messaging agreement. A service level definition (SLD) represents a service-based policy that protects service provider infrastructure access and utilization constraints. An SLD may be utilized to protect infrastructure from accesses by non-contracting entities for which an SLA has not been established, to control resource utilization to prevent service degradation, or other form of service level constraint.